Just a few years removed from a high school wrestling career during which he competed at 152 pounds, Hinton had beefed up to 210 while hitting the weights. He was still interested in competing, but wrestling hadn’t worked out his drive remained from growing up in an extremely athletic family.

So he hopped into a combat class for females.

“Then before you know it, there were 10 or 12 guys,” Hinton said. “We started training for this huge show in Columbus called the Arnold Classic, and things took off from there.”

Although he started a little later than some mixed martial artists, the 38-year-old Cincinnati resident is getting his big shot and a major challenge against a unique MMA character. On April 8 at Bellator 13, Hinton will appear in the Bellator Fighting Championships season-two lightweight tournament with a bout against former UFC lightweight contender Roger Huerta at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla.

Hinton has compiled his 6-0 record in two and a half years since winning the kickboxing tournament at the Arnold Sports Festival (previously known as the Arnold Classic), which boosted him into MMA training and competition. It hasn’t taken the former street brawler, who followed his father into the elevator technician business, long to find his groove in MMA, all while also becoming a gym owner in the city.

“I look at it like the pressure’s on Roger,” said Hinton, who so far has fought at MMA Big Show and Intimidation Cage Fighting events in the Cincinnati area. “He’s fighting a no-name old man from Cincinnati. Yeah, he might have more experience on record, but I’ll tell ya, I was probably in about 100 fights on the street before he was born.”

Leading an athletic family

Hinton grew up on the west side of Cincinnati with a father who spent 40 years working for the Otis Elevator Company and a mother who raised three sons and a daughter.

His family’s athletic resume is impressive. One brother was a standout high school wrestler before focusing on academics at the Air Force Academy. Another brother played baseball at the University of Cincinnati. His sister played junior college soccer.

Hinton, as the oldest, was just as talented. His father was a former Marine who served in Vietnam, and in a strict household, Hinton excelled in most sports, including wrestling.

After high school, life led him to several well-paying construction jobs. He later joined his father with the Otis Elevator Company repairing and maintaining the equipment.

“That’s tough work, man,” Hinton said. “You’re doing rigging, installation. You have to re-cable some of the equipment. You’re in these shafts where it gets to about 140 degrees and so hot you want to pass out.

“It’s just tough, greasy, nasty work.”

That’s where the work ethic comes from. But athletically, Hinton had a break after high school. He had done some boxing as a teenager – in part because he was a no-back-down fighter who was often in brawls growing up – so he knew his way around gyms when he started his interest in power lifting.

“I do not condone fighting on the street because I’ve moved on from that part of my life, but at the time I just wasn’t one to walk away from anything,” Hinton said. “So I looked for another way to let that stuff out.”

Then he and his gym mates found the kickboxing class, and they got serious. The Arnold Sports Festival, an annual event in Columbus celebrating fitness and athleticism, held a kickboxing tournament, and Hinton entered not knowing what to expect.

With competitors from international countries and Hinton still new to competition in the sport, he made his way through the tournament and found himself in the final. A major decision gave him the title, a tournament MVP honor and a start to a later-blooming career.

Early title shot

After his kickboxing victory, Hinton decided he wanted a more MMA-focused place to train, so he and a partner founded Cincy MMA and Fitness, a 9,000-square-foot facility serving those both wanting to train or just work out.

Before long, he scheduled his first amateur fight, and it ended victoriously in 49 seconds.

“The next thing you know,” Hinton said, “it kind of took off.”

His professional debut came at an MMA Big Show event on Nov. 3, 2007. By his third fight, he won that organization’s 155-pound belt. After another three fights in Intimidation Cage Fighting, his shot with Bellator came.

But that chance is paired with a major challenge, against a fighter that was in many ways the face of the sport to the masses as a Sports Illustrated cover figure.

With his biggest opportunity, Hinton is facing a UFC veteran who is 20-3-1.

“It’s kind of surreal fighting a guy who’s been on TV so much,” he said. “I never foresaw this three years ago. I mean, I watched this guy fight, and now I’m going against him. That’s just a really humbling thing to happen considering where I’ve come from.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features
writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the
circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter
with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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